Gates' & Hundt's
New Pie in the Sky

Bill finds a new way to make you pay

Francis Vale

According to County Data Corporation, more beauty salons
than computer service shops were started up in 1996. And more people went into
the lawn maintenance business than became communications consultants. In
America, looking good, whether it be your grass or your hair, still counts for
more than knowing something useful. This is also the premise behind most
computer company's PR efforts -- Never muss up a new product's looks with the
facts. Of course, this PR axiom becomes even more critical when there is no
product at all.

This product legerdemain has probably reached its zenith (literally) with the
announcement that Mr. Gates and Mr. McCaw (of McCaw cellular fame) have
managed to get Boeing to put $100 million into their new Teledesic venture.
This is an Internet communications scheme that intends to put 250 (!)
satellites into low flying orbit around the planet. Once all aloft, the
digital image of Smiling Bill can be beamed down to everyone, everywhere on
Earth.

When finished sometime next century, this project will cost a reported $9
billion. But as of today, even with Boeing's $100 million, this great
ego-in-the-sky effort is still 90% short of its total funding mark. Given that
Bill and Craig own 70% of this celestial concern, you have to wonder why they
just didn't write out a check for the balance. Well, you know what they say
about billionaires never having any money on them.

But
however Gates and McCaw find the missing Teledesic money, it will probably
make for
a great
made-for-TV movie. And if Microsoft, Intel, and Compaq get
their way, you will only be able to view this gripping satellite saga on one
of
their new "PC-TVs." This industry troika has made the decision to make all
their new PC video receiver gear completely incompatible with the NAB's
(National Association of Broadcasters) methods for sending digital TV signals.

Now in case you missed it, in late 1996, the Federal Communications Commission
threw out all the digital broadcast guidelines that had been under development
for ten years by the TV industry. But it seems that the (now departing)
FCC's chairman, Reed Hundt, has become a great Friend of Bill (the one in
Redmond, not the Whitehouse). This new FOB apparently had an MS epiphany. He
came to the sudden realization that TV people are bad, and computer people are
good. Thus, Hundt decided that free market forces, and not the NAB, should
decide what your new digital TV picture should look like.

With the
FCC's green light, Microsoft, et al, are now in a race to steal the digital
TV market
away from the NAB, and the entire consumer electronics
industry, all of whom have pledged to stick to their original, ten year
R&D, game plan. Come 1998, when the top ten TV markets in America have to
be able to receive these new terrestrial broadcast digital signals, it will be
interesting to see who blinks first, Disney/ABC/Sony or Microsoft/Intel/Compaq.

Certainly, the viewer will be squinting more when watching the MS Bob PC TV
network. To make room for the new digitally broadcast services (E mail, Web,
etc.) so earnestly desired by Microsoft, the PC TV's progressively scanned
display will only offer low resolution images (480 lines for live video
capture, 720 lines for 35 mm films.) In contrast, all of the interlaced-only
programs beamed by ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox will sport super quality pictures at
1,080 lines x 1,920 pixels. But even when the big TV's scan rate is upped to
720 lines for 35 mm film, it's still only equivalent to 540 TV lines. This is
because its computer progressive scan is happening at 480 pixels (720 x 480 =
540 equivalent TV lines.) This antique VGA resolution is necessary because any
higher than 480, and characters become so small you cannot read E mail or Web
page text from ten or more feet away; the typical viewing distance for watching
a big screen TV. (To compensate for the PC's relative image loss, companies
like Compaq are also putting line doublers into their PC Theaters.)

Naturally, this fact is rarely mentioned in Compaq's or any other PC theater
maker's breathless PR. Who wants to hear that their new millennium PC Theater
is no better than an antiquated PC?

However, Microsoft might want to hear about the PC Theater's instant-on mode.
This mode brings up a TV programming schedule on the screen, and not MS
Windows. But Microsoft has mandated its licensees that only the Windows logo is
to appear on PC start-up.

Maybe that's how Bill intends to raise his missing Teledesic billions: every
time the consumer hits the TV's on button, Bill gets another royalty payment!

Who said Gates wasn't a visionary?

Bottom Line

Home Users: Get out the reading glasses! You will soon be spending many
entertaining hours squinting at the big tube, trying to figure out ways to
wittily answer all that flame mail, as well trashing megabytes of junk Spam.

Business Users: What do you care about home TV? Besides, your business
has so many other ways to help Bill get rich. (By the way, got all those
security holes in NT fixed yet?)

Power Users: Someone has to run this new TV computer. Your parents are
clueless, so that leaves you in charge. Yeh! Pass the remote, dad, you're
fired. And oh yeh, go buy me some Twinkies.